Resto gearing questions:

I just finished reading through the Resto Itemization thread, looking for advice in regards to 4T9 and 2T10. Only found a few tidbits, but was still unsure of what to use.

I have 4T9 (all ilvl245, no chestpiece, usually have 25% crit raid-buffed with it equipped) in my bags, but I'm currently running with a pure haste set (equipped).

I'm wondering if my current setup 'trumps' the 4T9 bonus. Also, I'm probably running with too much haste (over 1k might be overkill); should I swap to pure SP? Although, it is nice to have that buffer haste in case I lose any buffs during the course of a fight.


Edit: hmm, after spending a while playing with the TreeCalcs spreadsheet, I seem to have answered my own questions. Better healing output with 4T9, 11/0/60, and 860 haste, although my regen seems to drop quite a bit.

Yes, 860 haste is enough. You need 856 to hit the cap with 5/5 GotEM. Any more than that won't do anything for your instants, is pretty marginal for Nourish, but will still help Regrowth and unglyphed HT. 4T9 and 4T10 are both pretty fantastic set bonuses, but both require that you wear 2 crit pieces.

You'll probably find when you play with treecalcs that the values of haste and sp are extremely close, so having more haste 'in case I lose buffs' is probably not wise - the sp will always be effective.

I've been retired for about 3 months. I last killed Heroic Anub'arak, and then quit for a while.

What has changed in those 3 months for Feral DPS? In terms of gearing, rotation, etc. What do I want to look out for in terms of playing as a feral DPS?

The biggest difference between T9 gearing for cats and T10 gearing is that you need to occasionally keep in mind how close you're getting to the white crit cap (76%) and what kind of gearing choices that may enforce. In general most druids are either going for the arpen hard cap if they have the right trinkets or going for the soft cap if they do not, and then emphasizing 4pT10 + one offset piece.

Agility and arpen remain the top stats, but strength, hit and expertise can all be quite high depending on your combination; hit and expertise tend to win when you are arpen-soft capped and are close to or above the white crit cap.

Closing this thread as we don't expect folks to go through a bunch of random questions anyhow. A reasonably well-done FAQ is now included in the SQSA thread that is stickied. Thanks and enjoy!

Edit: Please don't be alarmed if you had posted in the other thread and your post got deleted and/or banished to the Suck thread. I just wanted to start it off clean since the discussion was quite old.